Con­certed Ef­fort Needed To Com­bat Risk In Agri Sec­tors

THIS IS ES­SEN­TIAL IN PRO­MOT­ING GOOD ADAP­TA­TION PRAC­TICES

Acon­certed ef­fort is needed to dis­ag­gre­gate or ‘down­scale’ cli­mate risk data to un­der­stand the lo­ca­tion spe­cific risks in Agri­cul­ture sec­tors. This is es­sen­tial in pro­mot­ing good adap­ta­tion prac­tices.

Ap­ply­ing these col­lec­tive goals of adap­ta­tion and long-term re­siliency can lead to im­prove­ments to­wards the boarder goal of sus­tain­abil­ity and eco­nomic growth par­tic­u­larly in our pro­duc­tive sec­tors. These were the views of the Min­is­ter for Agri­cul­ture, Ru­ral and Mar­itime De­vel­op­ment and Na­tional Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Inia Seruiratu at the Ca­pac­ity Build­ing Work­shop at Tanoa International in Nadi yes­ter­day.

“The foun­da­tion of this syn­ergy is rooted in the knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of the cli­mate risk. “With in­no­va­tions in cli­mate out­look and sea­sonal fore­cast­ing, in com­bi­na­tion with near real-time satel­lite in­for­ma­tion and ground-based data, a sys­tem of mon­i­tor­ing and early warn­ing can be made more ef­fec­tive to ad­dress adap­ta­tion and re­silience needs.” The Min­is­ter praised the UN Eco­nomic and So­cial Com­mis­sion for Asia and the Pa­cific (ESCAP) and Pa­cific Com­mu­nity (SPC) as an ideal com­bi­na­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the learn­ing from Asia to Pa­cific and vice-versa. ESCAP had al­ready suc­cess­fully pi­loted a num­ber of re­silient projects in agri­cul­ture in Asia through its col­lab­o­rat­ing part­ner, the Re­gional In­te­grated Multi-haz­ard Early Warn­ing Sys­tems for Africa and Asia; in­clud­ing in­no­va­tions like the Mon­soon Fo­rums and Cli­mate Field schools.

“It is time to put our ef­forts to­gether in learn­ing how to adapt these in­no­va­tions in the par­tic­u­lar con­text of Pa­cific SIDS,” he added. “The work­shop is ad­dress­ing a com­ple­ment of main­stream­ing start­ing from un­der­stand­ing the cli­mate risk, com­mu­ni­cat­ing the risk spe­cific to agri­cul­ture sec­tor to the stake­hold­ers and sug­gest­ing the tools and tech­niques for the adap­ta­tion. “This is not a stand­alone meet­ing but is the be­gin­ning of a longer re­gional part­ner­ship where we re­quest ESCAP to take the out­comes of the meet­ing for­ward to build re­silience in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in the re­gion.”

Re­silient Agri­cul­ture in the Pa­cific

“The ini­tia­tive to host a sub-re­gional ex­pert meet­ing in Fiji was borne out of a need to build a re­silient agri­cul­ture in the Pa­cific, par­tic­u­larly in re­sponse to the grow­ing cli­mate vari­abil­ity and cli­mate change sce­nar­ios that we all have been fac­ing in re­cent years.

“In Asia and the Pa­cific, build­ing re­silience is not a ques­tion of choice, but rather a col­lec­tive im­per­a­tive. He added their goal is to find a mech­a­nism that could de­liver on the ground tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to im­ple­ment re­silient and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture prac­tices in the Pa­cific SIDS. “We wanted to ac­com­plish this through south-south co­op­er­a­tion and shar­ing learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences and adap­tive prac­tices between Asia and the Pa­cific,” he said.

“The col­lec­tive idea was to cre­ate a stronger, more pro­duc­tive agri­cul­ture sec­tor us­ing a two pronged strat­egy that fo­cussed both on medium term adap­ta­tion and long term re­silience to stem im­pacts of dis­as­ters.”

Pa­cific Agri­cul­tural Min­is­te­rial Con­fer­ence

The Pa­cific Agri­cul­tural Min­is­te­rial Con­fer­ence would be held in Van­u­atu next year. “This is an ex­pert group meet­ing, we have to take the re­sults from this meet­ing for­ward to the prac­ti­tion­ers and build their ca­pac­ity to im­ple­ment these strate­gies at the ground level. “We need to de­velop a net­work of stake­hold­ers between prac­ti­tion­ers of re­silient agri­cul­ture in the Pa­cific and in Asia to share knowl­edge and strate­gies that will en­hance south-south co­op­er­a­tion in the re­gion. “Tran­si­tion­ing from ex­pert di­a­logue to ca­pac­ity de­vel­op­ment, we re­quest ESCAP to de­velop fur­ther train­ing that will give us the valu­able tools and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­ity build­ing to truly main­stream dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor.